HOUSTON – The greatest kick in Super Bowl history almost wasn’t.

Remember that when the latest version of the NFL’s ultimate game is on the line Sunday and New England kicker Adam Vinatieri lines up a half-dozen paces behind the holder, both of them framed by the bright yellow goalposts in the distance.

Because the story of how Vinatieri got there, 127 years after a main branch of the family tree was nearly sawed off, is one he will never forget.

“There would have been a different kicker here,” Vinatieri said Tuesday, chuckling softly. “That’s for sure.”

In 1876, Vinatieri’s great-great-grandfather Felix was the bandleader for the 7th Cavalry. One summer day in late June, Gen. George Custer ordered Vinatieri and his 16-member brass band to stay behind on a supply steamboat, instead of meeting up with the rest of the unit at Little Big Horn.

As audibles go, this one turned out to be a blessing for the Vinatieri line. On June 26, Custer and 276 of his men were ambushed and massacred in an epic battle against Crazy Horse and his Sioux warriors. That may have marked the first, but hardly the last, spectacular escape by a member of the clan.

“That’s part of what we do,” said John Kasay, Vinatieri’s opposite number with the Carolina Panthers. “You can fear it or you can embrace it.”

Either way, it’s no small feat to kick a football through a 10-foot high fork with uprights set 18 1/2 feet apart. Vinatieri and Kasay are two of the most clutch kickers in a business that offers next-to-zero job security and invites constant scorn. Other players fight hand-to-hand in the trenches for 3 1/2 hours to move the ball a few precious yards, then have to turn the stage over to their undersized teammates – in spotless uniforms, no less – when it matters most.

“Resent him?” Pats defensive lineman Richard Seymour said. “No way. When you’re building a house, you need a foundation, walls, a roof and all kinds of other things. That’s what being part of a team means.”

“We’re don’t worry about one guy getting the glory, kicker or not,” safety Rodney Harrison concurred.

Despite those endorsements, Vinatieri felt compelled to add a clarification.

“They don’t resent you,” he said, “as long as you put it through the posts.”

He’s been doing that consistently for eight seasons now, never better than when the pressure is at its most fierce.

Fifteen times over the course of his career, Vinatieri has kicked field goals in the final minute of the fourth quarter or overtime to seal New England victories. His 48-yarder in the 2002 Super Bowl – the first time a team scored on the final play to decide the game – became an instant classic, but he rates it as only his second best.

No. 1 on Vinatieri’s hit list came two weeks earlier in the infamous “Tuck Rule” playoff game against Oakland.

“It was a much harder kick, a 45-yarder in five inches of snow … and I was just hoping it would clear the line of scrimmage.”

The Pats trailed by three points at the time. Vinatieri recalled watching the ball twist in the wind, taking on snow as it sailed herky-jerky through a blizzard.

“I was holding my breath,” Vinatieri said, “for a very long time.”

Those two kicks, sandwiched around a 23-yard field goal in overtime that sealed New England’s win over the Raiders, have become a template for his career. A few weeks later, he turned up on David Letterman’s show to try to kick a ball from atop one building to another, 93 yards away.

“I told him, ‘You realize a kickoff into the end zone is 70 yards, right?’ And he said, ‘We’ll try, anyway.”‘

The kick was short, but the words, “We’ll try, anyway” may yet become the family motto.

Though few of Vinatieri’s teammates know the story of his great-great-grandfather and Little Big Horn, most of them know something about his third cousin, another cold-blooded performer who knows how daunting it can be to make something fly from here to there. That would be daredevil Evel Knievel.

“Talk about guts,” Vinatieri said. “If I miss one, chances are I don’t wind up in a hospital.”

Then Vinatieri paused, remembering how he hasn’t had to pay for a beer in Boston for several years now, how total strangers come up to him and tell him where they were and what they were doing when he split the uprights on that snowy New England night two years ago.

“Of course,” Vinatieri said, chuckling softly one more time, “you never know.”

—

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org

AP-ES-01-27-04 1921EST